June 2009

June 30, 2009

There’s no doubt that Facebook is developing a Web payment platform to rival those of Google, Amazon and eBay (PayPal).
But Facebook may also be looking to crack one of the biggest nuts in
the online payment world, which is mobile. Facebook spokesperson Kathleen Loughlin confirmed reports that the social networking site has hired Prashant Fuloria, a former Google employee who worked on Google Checkout; given Facebook’s obvious focus on mobile Web applications, Fuloria’s direction is clear.

The principal roadblock to facilitating mobile payments is the
mobile carriers themselves. In order to charge customers, sites can
pick from two equally deadly poisons: allow customers to charge
products or services to their wireless bill, which is transparent and
easy but costs the vendor close to 30 percent of the transaction price;
or else they have to ask customers to pick a payment method like a
credit card or a PayPal or Google Checkout account.

One of the most compelling attributes of Web
2.0 is that it transformed the static Interweb from something pushed at
us to something that includes our inputs. The coincidence of Howard
Dean's intelligent use of the Web, the rise of Facebook in public
consciousness and Barack Obama's very technologically-savvy campaign
has led to the expectation that Government 2.0 would quickly follow.

That hasn't happened, in part for many of the reasons our Mitch
Wagner noted earlier this month, but most notably because of the huge numbers of people involved.

Wireless network operators have an unprecedented opportunity to jump
off their churn and burn treadmill and create valuable and lasting
relationships with end users, handset makers and application vendors
and, if they really play their cards right, could even wean themselves
off the handset subsidy habit that is further debilitating their
businesses.

The ball might finally get rolling tomorrow
for the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, not a moment too soon
where operators and Internet-starved rural communities are concerned.

Worse, though, than the fact that many projects won't actually get
started until the spring of 2010, is the number of groups and
communities that are going to come away from the process empty handed
and potentially discouraged.

Here is a parable about Google
that its executives seem to have forgotten: There once was a Web site
so good that although all it ever did was send people away, they kept
coming back, over and over and over again. Only to be sent away again.

In fact, the only reason people keep coming back to this
site is because it does such a great job of sending them away. This
site has been so successful at sending people away, that it’s been able
to do very well with advertising: ~$15 billion.

But Google has become so preoccupied with matching Twitter’s
real-time search capabilities that it is losing sight of its primary
mission, which is to provide meaningful search results. While none of
its traditional competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo are likely to shave many points from its lead in search market share, Facebook (which suffers from its own form of Twitter-envy) may actually be in a better position to capitalize on the resurgent chaos of Google’s search results.

June 26, 2009

A killer application has finally emerged that should allow
smartphones to overtake conventional PCs and laptops as the computing
device of choice: it’s called augmented reality, and as absurd as that
sounds, that’s exactly what it is.

Mobile consultant Tomi Ahonen wrote on his mobile developer forum that, “this is one of those game-changer types of innovations.”

My recent post accusing Oracle of lying about its chief rival
was close enough to the mark to get under Oracle’s skin. Still, it had
some holes I couldn’t fill, not least of which because of different
reporting periods for the two companies. But if I had half the
accounting skills of my colleague at ZDNet, Dennis Howlett, I could have done a better job of proving my point. I shall endeavor to learn at the master’s feet.

At issue, Oracle took a largely specious shot at SAP, contending in
the press release accompanying its earnings report this week that it “took market share from SAP
in every region around the world.” My point, however awkwardly
expressed, was that Oracle is comparing its entire revenue to that of
SAP, while the companies don’t actually compete in all areas; the
numbers, which don’t lie, show that Oracle’s growth is fueled chiefly
by database and middleware, not business applications, which is the
only area where the two companies compete.

Palm CEO Jonathan Rubinstein doesn’t think he has to beat the brains out of former employer Apple,
or any other smartphone vendor, in order for Palm to succeed. It’s a
remarkably calm assessment from the leader of a company whose future depends largely on the success of a single product launch,
and even more so in the context of the testosterone-driven culture we
inhabit, where from sports stadiums to Silicon Valley we’re more
accustomed to hearing macho posturing than reasoned discourse.
According to Rubinstein, the smartphone market has so much growth in
store for it that “there’s room for three to five players to win in
this space. We don’t have to beat each other to prosper.”

Yesterday’s earnings report didn’t include figures from the release
of Pre, the hook on which Palm is hanging its only hat, so Rubinstein
prefaced his comments with a few nuggets about the company’s prized new
handset. The most impressive factoid, given that the Pre launched less
than a month ago, is that customers have already downloaded over one
million apps, even though Palm has been very slow bringing them to
market and only offers eighteen apps to date.

June 25, 2009

A Twitter campaignastroturfed by email marketing campaign vendor Freshview
is asking (or is it begging?) Microsoft to reverse course on a key
technology decision made for Office 2007 in its next release of
Outlook, slated for next year.